Retired Republican Senator Leads Effort to Smash Local
Tea Party
by Charlie Spiering 28 Aug 2014
Sen. Al Simpson (R-WY)
retired from the Senate in 1997, but he is now celebrating another political
victory in his state.
The retired senator ran and won his election as a member of
the Republican precinct committee in his hometown of Cody, Wyoming, together
with his wife Ann.
Both Simpsons earned a majority of the vote, effectively
pushing out Tea Party Republicans in the precinct.
“We decided we’d start over,” Simpson explained in an
interview with Breitbart News. “We did that about forty years ago when we
started in politics.”
Although he retired from state politics long ago, Simpson
indicated he was annoyed with Tea Party conservatives criticizing his record as
a conservative, and had grown increasingly alarmed at the tone of the local
Republican party.
Together, the Simpsons now have the ability to influence the
conversation, particularly the direction of the Republican party in Wyoming.
“I’m not against anybody, I just want to be in the room,” he
said. “I just want to be there for the debate.”
Simpson said that he respected the Tea Party for calling for
less debt, less spending, and less government, but he was deeply disturbed
about the party’s direction.
“People here in the county, there was just some very
extremist views coming, mostly social issues,” Simpson said.
Abortion, he explained, while terrible, was a “deeply
intimate and personal decision” for a woman that the government should not be
involved in. He also signaled his support for gay marriage.
Simpson indicated that he was looking forward to his new
role in the party.
“It’s a treat, I mean I love the party, hell I’ve been in it
since 1952,” he said. “I’ve been called a leftwing nut and a rightwing nut, so
I ought to get in there and see where the party is.”
To the Tea Party, Simpson represents what’s wrong with with
the old guard of Wyoming Republicans.
“Al Simpson, go away,” Robert J. DiLorenzo, the founder of
the Big Horn Basin Tea Party said shortly in an interview with Breitbart News.
Members of the Tea Party called for Simpson to renounce his
party affiliation, accusing him of straying too far from the party platform.
“If he spent half the amount of time that he spends
attacking the Tea Party and spent that time attacking liberal and progressive
policies, we might get somewhere,” DiLorenzo said.
An overwhelmingly Republican state, Tea Party conservatives
point out that they need to be vigilant to keep liberals from masquerading as
Republicans to get elected.
DiLorenzo pointed out that Simpson was part of the problem
by only paying “lip service” to Wyoming Republican ideals.
“Our platform is identical to the Republican state party
platform, it’s identical the only difference is that we actually mean it, and
they don’t,” he said.
Tea Party activists in the state were very aware of
Simpson’s role in the public feud with the Cheney family at an event at the
Buffalo Bill Historical Center when Liz Cheney was challenging incumbent U.S.
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY).
Cheney eventually dropped out of the race, but Simpson was
one member of the Republican establishment that publicly opposed her candidacy.
Now, Simpson has muscled his way back into the political
conversation.
“All right. How nice. Good luck,” DiLorenzo said, reacting
to Simpson’s coup. “It’s kind of bizarre.”
Simpson’s win was the culmination of an effort to “take
back” the local Republican party from people he considered too extreme.
Earlier in the year, Simpson invited DiLorenzo for a lunch,
so that they could sit down and discuss their differences.
Simpson explained during the meeting that he was tired of
the Big Horn Basin Tea Party maligning his record.
“That’s what I do, I’ve always done that,” he explained to
Breitbart News about the lunch. “If those guys are after my ass, I like to go
visit with them.”
But the lunch didn’t go well as Simpson demanded that the
Tea Party learn to compromise, and DiLorenzo criticizing Republicans like
Simpson for hurting the party.
“We’re in this situation we’re in because you and your
cohorts have done nothing but compromise for the last forty years,” DiLorenzo
told Simpson during the lunch, citing the exploding national debt, and an
increasingly bigger government.
Simpson told DiLorenzo he was tired of the Tea Party
representatives taking shots at his political record.
“Don’t start using phrases about me if you don’t know who
the hell I am,” he said.
After the lunch, Simpson launched a
local coalition of
Republicans who vowed to “take back” the local Republican party from the Tea
Party extremists.
But the area Tea Party group viewed the idea as ludicrous.
“Take the Republican party back from who? Republicans?”
DiLorenzo asked. “Give me a break.”
spite of his local political victory, Simpson said that he
has no intention of seeking state or national office again.
"No, hell, I have no desire to do that, I just want to
be in the room when they’re talking and tell them where I’m coming from,” he
said.
“I think I’ve gone about as far as I can go,” he said,
quoting the song “Kansas City” from the musical Oklahoma!.
But DiLorenzo and his team of activists have no intention of
backing down in the fight to keep Wyoming conservative.
“We’re not going to permit Wyoming to go by the way of
Colorado, we’re just not going to permit it,” he said.
Al Simpson
Alan K. Simpson was
a U.S. Senate senator, a member of
the Iraq Study Group, is a director
at the Commission on Presidential
Debates, a director at the Committee
for a Responsible Federal Budget, and a co-chair for the National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform.
Note:
Lee H. Hamilton
was a co-chair for the Iraq Study Group,
and is an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. was a member of the Iraq Study Group, is an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), Valerie B. Jarrett’s great uncle, a director at the American
Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference
participant (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Valerie B. Jarrett
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, the senior adviser for the Barack
Obama administration, and her great uncle is Vernon E. Jordan Jr.
Newton N. Minow
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, and a director at the Commission
on Presidential Debates.
Alan K. Simpson is
a director at the Commission on
Presidential Debates, a director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a co-chair for the National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform, and was a U.S.
Senate senator.
